The cellular telecommunications has been under constant evolution, from the earlier days of GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) networks, to GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), to the modern system of UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) which can be found in various big cities around the world. In the very near future, the next generation Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks are going to be deployed. Along with access technologies, the services provided by the cellular telecommunications network have also been evolving.
Today's cellular network is no longer providing only rudimentary voice call services, but also short text message transmission and access to the global Internet. Recently, new services have even been expanded to cover non-human communications, such as machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has started defining the requirements for a cellular network to support machine-type communications in [Non-Patent Document 1]. This will make the cellular network even more suitable to support machine-type communications.
Machine-type communications can cover a very wide range of applications, from measurement collection from sensors, to remote control of devices. There are a lot of examples which employ cellular networks. For instance, [Patent Document 1] discloses an asset management architecture utilizing cellular networks to control remote assets, such as automatically-operated vehicles. In [Patent Document 3], a system which uses a regular cellular mobile phone to control an automobile is also described.
The services provided by cellular communications system are also getting more specific. For instance, some services provide location specific information to the user. This will involve the network obtaining the current location of the mobile phone (or user equipment, UE, in 3GPP terminology) using technique such as those disclosed by [Patent Document 2], [Patent Document 4], and [Patent Document 6]. It is also possible for the network to maintain a presence server, such as described in [Patent Document 7]. By exposing the presence information to application servers through methods taught by [Patent Document 5], the application servers can tailor information according to the present location of the mobile phone.